


Wade

by thelma_throwaway



Category: Firefly, Serenity (2005)
Genre: F/M, Humor, Implied Sexual Content, Minor Jayne Cobb/River Tam, River thoughts, Sexual Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:08:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23269720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelma_throwaway/pseuds/thelma_throwaway
Summary: She’s learning to resist getting pulled into the current of other people’s emotions.
Relationships: Kaylee Frye/Simon Tam, River Tam/Original Male Character(s), pre-rayne - Relationship
Kudos: 8





	Wade

**Author's Note:**

> Content notes: discussion of contraceptives (emergency and regular) and mentions of youthful experimentation.
> 
> Not part of the "How-It Was" 'verse

Folks assume Reading is like getting caught in a rainstorm. Needling, wearying, corrosive. A deluge of half-though thoughts, have-felt feelings, half-meant intentions. And once it was-- she lived like a wretch, soaked and shivering.

Now it’s more like an endless river, wide and steady. She can dip a toe or wade in but the current comes and goes. And if she floats too far from shore...

He’s a nice lad, good intentions plain and buoyant. He thinks she’s just about the most shiniest thing to ever touch down on this nowhere planet and he’s not wrong, so she skims him up into her arms. Somewhere between thoughts and feelings he thrums over her in waves

_yesmoregiveherakissmoremorelordforgivemeyes_

She doesn’t feel much the next morning, but he’s a roiling tide of joy, suspicion, lust. He half thought he’s pinned her down, can’t believe the sight of her little self fluttering into the ship’s dark open maw. She gives a little wave that says _have a nice life._

“Whos’ that?” the captain asks as the bay door closes.

“Calvin.” She feels for the pair of panties she’d stuffed into her pocket on her way out of the boy’s stifling little apartment.

Mal always floats cool and smooth with a wicked, sea-salt undertow. Protective, jealous, guilty, horny--- they’re all the same to him, lapping at her ankles trying to draw her in, drag her along. She’s learning to resist getting pulled into the current of other people’s emotions. They don’t belong to her, leave her exhausted and confused. And guilty. And jealous.

And horny.

"Kelvin get you a nice gift?” he smirks, noticing the hand fiddling in her pocket. He reckons it’s some trinket, or a little daisy with its neck snapped.

She holds up the crumpled fabric, dangling off one finger. “I guess.”

“Ahem-- well-- a gal’s first time should be somewhat memorable.”

“It wasn’t my first time.”

Mal hides a gulp in a guffaw, shakes his head. “He show you any stars at least?”

“Not so many as I see when I’m flying.”

She leaves him to ponder a puddle on what that might mean. Simon isn’t in the infirmary so she slips into the darkened pod to find a contraceptive pill in the medicine cabinet. The box has been roughly opened, several of the blister packs missing and she rolls her eyes.

The perrenial worry ripples across the little reservoir of the ship, everyone all dammed up together, nowhere for anything to escape to, to dissipate. Landing planetside a spell helped clear the water but that’s usually when the plinking thoughts came pitterpattering _could-it-be-? could-it-be-? am-i?_ Most times it was hard to tell who was thinking it, sometimes it seemed to be everyone at once.

The door to the infirmary slides open.

“Oh!” Kaylee’s big, nervous eyes alight on her and she smiles. With a grin she slides the door shut and tiptoes over to River in the dark. She whispers, “You too, huh? Hope it was good at least.”

River shrugs. She doesn’t know what she had even wanted from him. Calvin had been nice and guileless, which seemed appealing at the time but left her feeling unsatisfied. The farther they flew from his dusty little port town, the stronger her mind associated his touch and taste with a bowl of oatmeal. She holds up the mangled box. “Someone beat us here.”

“Looks to be Mr.Cobb’s work.” Kaylee examines the torn package and snaps off two tabs for them from the sheet. “Ought to get on proper birth control I know it-- it just fuzzes my head and nothing fits right and I just cry and cry, I know its silly. I’m not ready at all for--- oh! Sorry, River. I don’t mean to flood ya with this stuff. It bein’ your potential um---”

River’s blood has come back and she’s been tracking it faithfully, learning the rhythm of her own tides. It’s been effective so far. She had thought that they’d taken it all away but after a few months on Serenity her period had returned, along with the insistent, half-understood urges she’d started feeling before enrolling at the Academy.

She knows that everyone thinks she’s innocent, though what that has to do with sex she’s never quite known. There had been plenty of opportunity in her supposedly respectable upbringing to explore when the adults took their leave for brandy and cigars or the chaperones went to bed, full aware their dormful of young baccalaureats had agreed to the conference for the unadvertised perks naturally occuring when groups of teenagers convene away from home.

It was at one of these conferences that she’d first spoken with a recruiter from the Academy, the same one that she’d had her last kiss as a real girl. It had tasted like turned fruit and as she slid out of his arms he’d said, “Don’t forget me when you’re famous, Tam.” She’d laughed and replied, “You can mop my lab!”

Surely he’d recognized her once they’d plastered her face across the ‘verse. Maybe he’s made it into a nice story for cocktail parties. Her last kiss as a real girl.

The door to the medbay slides open again. It’s Jayne, looking shamefaced when he sees them holding the remnants of the pill box. “Aww shit.”

“This is a whole new level of ham-fistedness!” Kaylee shakes the box at him. “You are cut off.”

“Hey! I needed ‘em quick. Wanted to leave her with a few, ya know. I’m just here to dispose of the evidence.”

“Well, that’s actually real nice of you Jayne,” she ponders. “But think about your quality of life if one of us gets in the family way.”

Jayne follows her hooked thumb to River, who sticks out her bottom lip and cradles her belly. He stifles a laugh with a mean look and growls, “That ain’t funny.”

Together they tuck the box in the very back of the cabinet, then seperate like thieves in the night. Kaylee splashes to the engine room, promising herself she’ll never go behind Simon’s back again, asking herself why she feels so ashamed when there’s no reason to, and was it terrible that she hadn’t told him she wanted to take it.

Jayne can rage like a tempest but most of the time his mind is just as placid as a tidepool, spiny, protozoic desires flitting in a shallow basin, never getting far. Once he steps out of the medbay, he's attention skitters off to the thought of a nip of whiskey and an afternoon nap.

Left to herself, River watches the surface of things go flat. She showers, changes into a new dress and thick socks. She thinks of that kiss, the sticky goodbye to her girlhood. She takes out her notebook and tries to sketch the boy’s face, then Calvin’s and another man she’d met once at a bar on a rinky-dink moon, then one of Badger’s doleful henchmen, then a gruff passenger they’d taken on for a spell.

At dinner she slides her plate next to Jayne’s so she won’t have to look him in the eye-- he has no poker face to speak of and has been known to burst under pressure. Kaylee busies herself dashing this and that herb on a pile of protein, nervouse and sloshing in her skinThey are all fit to flood when Simon bangs down the stairs, torn box held aloft.

“This!” He bellows, shaking in hand and voice. “This is unacceptable.”

“Simon--” Kaylee starts but River shakes her head.

“It was me,” Jayne cuts in. She feels him flex with indignation-- he didn’t think it proper for Simon to think it was his meimei’s doing. “You kin tell just by lookin’.”

“It was everyone,” fumes Simon. “I cannot keep contraceptives in my cabinet, they disappear like gorram cookies on Christmas. It’s not healthy! Look." Hurt trickles deep down the center of his rancor. River decides to stay on the shore for this one. “Beyond the fact that seemingly no one is comfortable coming to me regarding their sexual health, there are many, many options for contraception that are more effective than--- pilfering a morning after pill. Medical technology has--”

“Now, Doc,” Mal finally intercedes. “We came together for dinner, not to talk about the birds and the bees.”

“I’m not talking about the birds or the bees.” With this he tosses two dozen foil packets on the table. “We’re starting with condoms.”

A groan goes up around the table. Zoe snorts, readjusts her infant son at her breast. She’s on the shore with River. Innara picks one of the foil packets out of her dinner and sighs.

“And to demonstrate proper condom procedures, I have already acquired at great expense--” To a round of applause, he produces from his back pocket a shapely, bright yellow banana.

After dinner they’re treated to a technical lecture on the use of prophylactics. River wades back in, the current scented sweetly with good humor, ease, the hint of a blush on cheeks and necks. When it’s River’s turn to practice Simon finds reason to look elsewhere so she does it extra slow. She feels a little bad for him-- he was right that they should go to him and not raid his pharmacy cabinet. He was proud of his careful inventories and neat shelves. But it was just so-- Simon. It’s a small comfort to know that in all that they’ve been through, he’s still a total square.

She passes the fruit to Jayne and goes hot when he says, “Gonna needa bigger banana here, Doc.”

Once everyone’s had a chance they improvise a banana split with canned milk, some nutritional biscuits, and the last of Book’s precious cocoa powder. River is content to float in the happy swell, buffered pleasantly by gentle waves of wanting kicked up by the evening’s lecture. Too soon the flow becomes lazy, watches are checked and the laughter peters off. Simon ceremoniously proclaims that the condoms will stay on the table for anyone who needs them before leaving arm in arm with Kaylee. They all drift away in time.

River stays behind to bathe in the fleeting warmth of a happy moment, gathering up dirty plates and glasses. Jayne lingers too, inspecting a handful of condoms one by one against the light.

“Hey-- girl,” he calls conversationally, pocketing the approved wrappers. “

What?” She’s standing tip toed, scraping out a large pan.

He swells. Something warm and mineral, swallowing her toes, her calves, her thighs, her hips, her chest, like slipping into a hot spring. River cleaves into the current. “Wanna practice?”


End file.
